So some of you may recognise the car, I bought this off Steven on here. She is a 1989 Eunos Roadster in very good condition.

So a bit of history of the car, some of which is from what I have been told by Steven and some from the large pile of paperwork that Steven has given me with the car.From the import documents she seems to of left Japan in March 2003 from Sakai-Shi area of Osaka.From there she arrives in the UK and is registered in the UK in June 2003 with the Reg Number G853 WYO (is this going to be the reg that I will have once the private JDK 2612 reg is given back to Steven?)From here she lives down south in London/Surrey until 2007 when Steven purchased her, travelling down to London and driving her all the way up here to Scotland. Over the last few years Steven has put a lot of money into this car, this has included a full respray and of course those wheels.Steven has told me that they named her Maisie, however I have decided to re-name her Rika.

So whats in the name, well I wanted to give her a name that was Japanese given that she is a import and most of her life was spent in Japan, so I have choosen the name Rika. The name is from one of my favorite Anime charactors, Rika Furude is one of the main charators of a Anime series called Higurashi When They Cry.

I picked her up today and drove her back, she really does drive quite well, but of course there are some changes I want to make.

She is quite a basic model as far a imports go, she has manual windows, manual steering, no Air-con etc, but that does make for a very light car and the steering feels fine once up to speed with much more feel than my old Annabelle had with her power steering.

So at this moment this is how she is

As you can see the rear arches are in extremely good condition

She also came with these Fox Racing alloys, they are not in great condition, but they do have do have decent tyres on.

Initial progress is going to be fairly quick as I have parts that I took off Annabelle before she was taken away (what I thought I could get away with), I also have 2 weeks holiday so I will have plenty of time to give my attention to her. From there progress will slow. I expect to be able to get to a point of been happy with this car very quickly due to her condition.

Last edited by sarahlc on Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hi sarah, nice looking car !! Like the name and the reason you have choose it, also the bit of history too. It will not take you very long to stamp your own mark upon it, more soo as you know have two weeks spare time to get a gildy on !!Look forward to seeing the updates being post and to see you and your new friend "Rika" on a run sometime. cheers,

Well I have now got 4 sets of alloys now, I think I'm starting to develop a serious wheel problem

I went and collected these OZ Superleggera's from Bert on here, they have Toyo T1R's on them with a good ammount of tread left. The wheels will need a bit of a refurb to get them back to there best. I really like these wheels, before I got the Rota Subzeros for Annabelle, I considered getting Superleggera's but ruled them out on the basis of cost. They are a very light weight wheel.

I gave them a good clean up and then put them on.

I realised that I had not taken a picture of the interior for the initial post, so here it is, before I have done anything with it

As you can see from this photo she had 3 chrome vent ring things, with one missing, I am not a fan of chrome and with one missing I just pulled them off.I also removed the head unit that was in the car, it not that it was a bad unit (JVC KD-S73R), its just my head unit I managed to take out of Annabelle is a much better and newer unit. If you can't remember this is my head unit (this picture is it fitted to Annabelle but you get the idea).

I also fitted these, again these were taken from Annabelle

I also fitted the Stubby Ariel from that I managed to take from Annabelle.

As you can see the engine bay is pretty mucky at the moment, but this will all change soon. There was a bolt missing from the chrome Cam Cover vent tube, but Bert had one for me when I went to get the wheels, so everything here is present and correct.

First job was to sort out the headrest speakers, I opened up the headrest, and found the original speakers in place, as you can see they were in very poor condition, they were making all sorts of funny noises, so they were coming out.

Unlike when I did this job in my old UK car, this job is so much easier on the Roadster as all the wiring is already there. All I have to do is unbolt the speaker from the headrest, and then undo the 4 small screws as each corner of the speak, open them up, unplag the spade connector, pull the wires out the the original housing and plug the wires straight on to the JVC unit I removed from Annabelle. With a small bit of foam cut out the JVC units fit in fine, just do up the fit and I was done.

Next up I fitted the leather handbrake boot that I had taken off Annabelle.

I then found these in the glove box, the previous owner had clearly intended on getting these fitted, so a couple of minutes later I had them fitted.

So this is how the interior is now, looking a bit better, but there is still thinga I need to do in here.

The next thing I moved onto was the clear reflectors and side indicators.Rika already had clear side indicators fitted, but they were the chrome surround versions, not the black ones like mine, as you may know I am not a fan of chrome so they came off and my old ones went on.I had also rescued the clear reflectors from Annabelle, one was very slightly scratched front the crash, but it was quickly polished away using the plastic window polish stuff that us MK1 owners use on our rear windows.

I then moved on to the engine bay.First thing was to remove the Charcoal Canister. I haven't removed the solenoid yet, as I couldn't get the nut undone, and I didn't want to spend a long time on this at this point.Next up was to fitted the strut brace that I had taken from Annabelle.I noticed that the washer bottle had only a tiny amount of mouldy water in it, clearly screen wash had not been in this bottle for a long time. So I took it off the car and using a bottle brush I gave it a good clean, and filled it up with some fresh screen wash, its now probably the cleanest thing under the bonnet.I made a in here by cleaning all of the plastics. Clearly there is a lot more to do in here but this is as far as I got.

I didn't get anything done on her today, as I was to busy driving her, but there will be more updates over the next few days.

The next job I tackled was the limited amount of rust on the car, I love this car as non of the rust found was as bad as it looked, all of the below was just superficial surface rust and was quickly dealt with.

Here water had made its way under the paint at the seam in the sill just behind the drivers door, the paint had bubbled up, when I rubbed it down it was all surface rust, I rubbed it back to clean metal and applied rust converter and finished it off with stone chip paint.

I also dealt with this surface rust on the under side of the boot lid, most of this is because the paint had fallen off, again taken back to clear metal, rust converter applied and then sprayed up.

The last bit of rust was on the door.

When I rubbed this back I found this. This is quite strange, it looks like a fracture in the metal, possibly from when the panel was made 21 years ago!So I got out my welder, put a small bead of weld down it and then painted it all up.

To ensure that Rika stays in the same great condition I have completed fully rust proofing on her using Dinitrol

I managed to complete a few other jobs as wellThe nearside mirror had become lose and flopping all over the place, in the past someone had tried to hold the mirror in position with a zip tie around the base of the mirror, not with much success, so I took it apart, and set the bolt tightness in side the mirror.

I have also managed to fit the cabin brace bar that I used to have in my old car.

I also got the drivers side wiper arm painted up, and I have also fitted the Front Lip Spoiler that I had on my old car

At the moment the car cover is off, I am in the process of painting it up.

And one last thing, I have a question for you all. Does anyone know what this wire is/was for that was attached to the chrome vent pipe?

Got the answer to my question, that wire is would plug into the power steering pump if the car had power steering. So I will just tuck is out of the way.

The other thing that I did was to give the brake some attention. This unfortunately did mean that I found that the drivers side rear brake caliper was seized, so that was replaced, never a cheap experience.

I got the calipers and backing plates painted up before getting everything put back together.